U.S. Pat. No. 3,374,938 to Pierce, Jr., assigned to the present assignee, is directed to an article carrier of the wraparound type in which the bottom panels are secured in overlapping relation. A plurality of tongues on one of the bottom panels is disposed in corresponding transversely elongated apertures in the other of the bottom panels. Each of the tongues has a locking tab longitudinally aligned therewith for disposition in the same transversely elongated aperture as the tongue with which the locking tab is longitudinally aligned. Each of the tongues is threaded into position to have an edge to edge engagement with a transverse edge of the corresponding aperture. Each locking tab after being punched into position has an edge to edge engagement with the opposite transverse edge of the aperture to lock the overlapping bottom panels of the elongated blank to form the carrier.
The carrier of the present invention is an improvement of the Pierce '938 patent in that it obtains the edge to edge relation along the two opposite transverse edges of the transversely elongated apertures while being capable of accommodating articles of varying dimensions.
If the dimensions of the articles such as bottles, for example, vary considerably in size because of failure of the bottle manufacturer to control size uniformity, the prior art carriers do not have a tight wrap around all of the bottles as is desired. Thus, while the carrier of the Pierce '938 patent provides a very strong and satisfactory article carrier due to the double edge contact relationship between the tongues, the locking tabs, and the aperture edges, there are situations in which the dimensions of the articles are so non-uniform that a tight wrap cannot be obtained.
The adaptability of an article carrier of the wraparound type to articles of varying dimensions is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,410,397 to Cato, U.S. Pat. No. 3,508,699 to Graser, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,143 to Muller. An adjustable wraparound band for a bakery product is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,004,098 to Andrews.
The aforesaid Cato patent '397 discloses an adjustable carrier of the wraparound type in which a very small area of contact is obtained between curved ends of a locking tab and the longitudinal edges of the aperture through which the locking tab extends. Because of the very small and indirect engagement areas between the overlapping panels, the reliability of the locking engagement leaves much to be desired.
Additionally, the adjustability of the closure panel in the aforesaid Cato patent '397 is limited. This is because the locking tab is a single element movable into a variable aperture created by a bendable friction tab and capable of only slight adjustment in size.
The article carrier of the Graser patent '699 uses a punch tab for engagement with the longitudinal sides of rectangularly shaped cut-out apertures. This also has the disadvantage of being limited in the amount of adjustment and the lack of a substantially large and direct edge contact area for locking areas, as obtained in the Pierce '938 patent.
The carrier of the Muller patent '143 has a locking aperture to receive a locking tab. There is contact of only one edge of each of the tabs with the locking aperture. Again, the desired relatively large area of direct edge to edge engagement of the Pierce patent is missing.